two fakes and the truth
by Pandastacia
Summary: AU:/ ItaSaku. In electric blue font across their embrace: "Season Seven of the The Bachelor finale: He chose Sakura Haruno! (However, he does not love her.)"
1. Terrible Words

**disclaimer:** do not own The Bachelor or Naruto.  
**dedication**: to job searching. now love me. please.  
**A-Side Tracks:** inspired by post-The Bachelor revelations. I don't watch the show, but the Wikipedia page for JP was inspirational. As of now, this will remain a oneshot. I haven't forgotten _you stole my breath with their lives_, I swear, I just _had_ to write this.

* * *

**Season Seven of The Bachelor finale: He chose Sakura Haruno!**

**(However, he does not love her.)**

* * *

The crappy gossip mag crumpled between her hands.

Sakura leaned her chair back until her knees bumped against the kitchen table. She stared out the window above the kitchen sink as she curled her fingers around the cartoon bright pages. Every time she took pressure off to push her hair out of her face, it sprung back to near-flat with the subtitle taunting her.

"Fucking press," she said. "Fucking Uchiha." Her chuckle was a desperate cynical sound. "Maybe you think you can act your way out of a paper bag, but you can't act your way out of this."

She could, though – act, that is. After all, she'd charmed her way onto the show, had outdone her competition, had acted in love; all of it for a bet.

"You can't fake love, Sakura," Ino'd snorted, waving her hand. They were at a sushi bar downtown. "You are the best honest person I know and the best pretend-honest person I know, too, but love is a totally different ball game – not even Michael Jordan can switch from basketball to baseball and make it. You know what I mean?"

Sakura'd rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, Ino. Don't you think you're going to hurt your wrist if you keep flaunting your ring like that?"

Snorting, the blonde said, "It's not that big."

Sakura raised an eyebrow. "That is not what you told me last week."

Ino'd rolled her eyes. "Whatever. My point is that you can't convince someone else about love if you don't believe it yourself. It's not like facts. Love's too abstract for that. You can't fake what you can't feel."

"Whatever, Pig, whatever. You'll just have to put your money where your mouth it 'cause I'm gonna land that final carnation and you're going to have to suck on that."

Five months later, holding her arms above her head, Sakura lazily tossed the magazine at the garbage can. It unfolded slightly in the air, glossy pages like petals under a sharp breeze, but it landed unerringly in the dead center.

"Two points, Haruno," Uchiha said as he walked into the kitchen.

Sakura remained quiet, eyes fixed on where those terrible words – her very fears – had gone.

"Are you planning on spending the rest of the afternoon staring at the various appliances in our kitchen?" He walked around her, an apple in one hand, and stroked the exposed line of her shoulder.

She shuddered. 'Our kitchen'? Please. It was probably better to steer away from sharing time, she decided. They weren't in kindergarten. "Mmm. Have you been by the newspaper stand today?"

He paused. "Hm."

Looking up at him, she glared. "Do you know how _embarrassing_ this is, Uchiha? They're saying, 'Poor foolish girl. Poor fool.' I am anything but a fool. _They_ are fools and even _they_ can see what is going on here."

Uchiha slipped into the seat across from her as her eyes followed him. "I find, Haruno, that it hardly matters what people say."

"Then why won't you?" she asked. "Say them, I mean, if it 'hardly matters'." She mimicked his accent accurately and she knew by the way he stilled that he knew what she meant.

"Why are their words so terrible?"

She laughed.

Neither said anything for a few minutes. Sakura picked up her cup of tea and swirled it. He bit into his apple, chewing slowly. Uchiha looked at her and she stared at the bottom of her teacup as she finished the last of it. When she stared into the clumps of green tea leaves at the bottom, she had no answer.

"Do you remember when I chose you?" He was soft-sounding, lacking the steel she was familiar with.

She stiffened instinctively, teeth set against teeth. "Yes."

"When we weren't on camera."

Easing her jaw to the side, she said, "I was surprised on camera, you know? I had no idea beforehand. You never discussed your choices outside of when asked for the camera."

He slowly licked apple juice off of his lips with the tip of his tongue and her hand flinched, darting forward the slightest bit. "Remember, though, when I told you you'd make a great actress?"

Oh. That.

"That was another embarrassing moment." She laughed shakily. "Are you sure you want to remind me of that moment?"

"I chose you," Uchiha said, "because you could play the role needed. You can fake love and you can fake happiness, but you can't fake intelligence. You'd make a great asset for my company, not as my wife but as co-CEO."

"That's a large offer."

"And sincerely made."

She slid her chair away from the table, the china teacup clasped between her palms. It was tantalizing, the offer. With access to his funds and people, she could accomplish so much. But…

"Uchiha, I'm a doctor. That's what I want to do. I'm not interested in making this… bizarre arrangement into a business deal." The words cutting their way into her speech burned in her chest, but they were relentless. "In fact, we can cut away the bizarre arrangement."

He looked at her with his eyebrows raised. "The contract says that we have to get engaged."

"You've company lawyers," she said, firing back. She rinsed the cup in the sink before carefully washing it with soap and vinegar. "Surely, there's a loophole. Like - we're already engaged. Must we get married to fulfill the contract?"

"Hm."

Sakura kept her back to him. The tears threatened her in an onslaught of feeling and she wondered when faking it had made it. She swallowed hard before saying, "I think we should at least consider the option. There's no reason we should be unfulfilled on a personal level just for the sake of our professional lives."

She set the teacup on the drying rack and hurried past him to go to their bedroom. His fingers, sticky with apple juice, lightly encircled her wrist as she breezed past him. She wanted to hear him say her name. She wanted him to say, "Sakura." She wanted him to say he loved her just like she did in front of all of those blinding cameras on a tricked-up television set last night.

But she was a great actress, she supposed. Too bad he didn't know that her best acting came from the truth when she fell for his honesty. Those words had, against all of the odds and the practical walls she'd propped up against pain, come from her heart.

And he didn't believe her.

He'd asked her why the gossip magazine's words were so terrible when what people say doesn't matter.

Sakura knew they were so terrible because she knew them to be true.

* * *

**B-Side Tracks:** Spit this out all in one go because the muse was with me - like the force but more useful for writers - so I apologize for any typos and stuff. I was just really excited.


	2. Start Here

**Disclaimers:** I do not own the trademarked characters.  
**Dedications:** to Loretta, for letting me crash in her apartment for a few days when I said, "Hey, so I'm angry with the people here; can I drive five hours to visit you?"  
**A-Side Tracks**: Reread the first part and had to ease some of Sakura's pain for my own emotional well-being. I hope you enjoy.

* * *

"What's wrong with her?"

Itachi looked up from the tiny melting glaciers in his scotch to give Shisui a baleful stare. He didn't need to ask who the "her" in question was. "What gives you the impression that there is anything wrong with her?"

"Dude, you might make a mute appear verbose in comparison, but you also aren't opinionless and considering your life motto is basically, 'If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all," and you have said nothing at all to me _plus_ haven't introduced us, I can only conclude you have nothing nice to say about her." He took a deep breath. "So what's wrong with her?"

"It could also mean you are an embarrassment," Itachi said, reaching over the bar to take a sugar cane stick. He stirred his drink but didn't deny anything.

As a lifelong best friend, his cousin ignored him. "But at the same time, you proposed to her. We watched the same Disney movies as a kid, so you're a sucker for that whole 'heart and ring – two for one sale' deal, so you wouldn't get engaged if you didn't have feelings for her. But obviously, as previously indicated, you don't like her. Which leaves one option."

Itachi chewed on the sugar cane, just short of exasperation. Once Shisui insisted on explaining his conspiracy theory, there wasn't anything to be done except wait for his fuel to run out.

"You knocked her up, didn't you?"

Itachi bit too far and gagged as the sugar cane hit the back of his throat.

Shisui smacked the counter, an unholy look of glee on his face. "Knew it! Oh, Mikoto is going to be _so_ happy and _so_ disappointed at the same time – happy to have grandbabies but despairing you obviously weren't paying attention to her banana demonstration."

Distinctly uncomfortable with the number of eyes on them, Itachi closed their tabs and dragged Shisui out of the bar. "Haruno is not pregnant," he muttered.

"Then why are you two engaged?" Sidestepping a light post, Shisui kept right by Itachi's side. The street had lit streetlamps and was fairly empty, so their shadows were the only shiftings sharing the space.

"The whole point of The Bachelor is the end engagement, is it not?" Itachi managed a little sneer on the title. "Find true eligible love? Get opinions from millions of unqualified love doctors?"

When Shisui abruptly stopped, Itachi had only taken a few steps past him before he noticed. Looking back, he saw his cousin staring at him in disbelief. "What?"

"You went on a reality love show – a misnomer of a genre so rigged it makes wrestling look fair – to find _love_? Like, seriously?"

Itachi rolled his eyes and kept walking, forcing Shisui to continue as well. "No, I went on there to get publicity for my business." He tilted his head, scratching behind his ear absentmindedly, before he added in a soft rush, "And look for a partner."

For what was possibly the first time ever, Shisui appeared speechless. He opened his mouth and raised a hand, presumably to punctuate a point only to close and lower. Repeatedly. Itachi fought the urge to take a selfie with him in the background and send it to Shisui's mother.

In the end, he only let the silence continue. Someone had once told him to embrace miracles while he had them. It was an opportune occasion to take that piece of advice.

Itachi's microsmile dissolved when he remembered who had given him that advice and why.

He had employed his brother and his brother's favorite moron as his eyes and ears during the competition "for his love". People had always been more intuitive to Sasuke than they had ever been to Itachi, but even more than that, Itachi was very aware that his own presence among the woman changed them very perceptibly – after all, their goal was to seduce him and thus be chosen as his fiancée on camera. Sasuke and Naruto would be able to see the women behind closed doors without his influence. Perhaps Shisui was his brother in all but parentage, but Sasuke _was_ his brother and could write a very accurate (and embarrassing) exposé on Itachi.

(Incidentally, after Shisui had found out about the plan with Naruto and Sasuke, he hadn't stopped talking to Itachi.)

Haruno – or "Sakura-chan", as the bumbling duo called her – had been their favorite from the get-go. Itachi didn't really know why; he just knew that she had enchanted them thoroughly.

Okay, maybe he did.

Aside from the fact she was pretending to love him, Sakura was a genuinely good and kind person. Itachi rarely found those two qualities together, let alone coupled with intelligence. She didn't laugh at dreams; she listened to and asked about them. He'd seen her serious earnestness when Naruto talked about following in his father's footsteps. Helping people wasn't a hobby to her or a volunteering circuit but what she _did_.

She also wasn't nice for show but _kind_. Unlike many things and people in his previous life as the heir to the largest media empire in the world, he wasn't treated like one. Just human. He had grown up in the game long enough to recognize the quality's rarity.

He respected that.

Sasuke had known that when he'd pulled Itachi aside before the final carnation. Itachi wondered if Sasuke's heart had been the adamantium behind his words. He hadn't said, "Do not break her when you keep your heart." Sakura didn't – couldn't – break. Like a spring, she could bend and spread without breaking. Even if she ever were to share her heart with him, she was strong enough to weather love's unnecessarily fickle fortunes.

Itachi remembered how plainly he'd said, "She doesn't love me, not really. We are the means to each other's ends."

Sasuke had only enough time to give him a strange look before the final countdown began.

Now that he really knew why Sakura was on international television, very convincingly crying amour. It sounded like something out of Shisui's secret rom-com stash. Itachi decided to ask her when he got home.

"I'd wondered why _you_ – the guy who let go of a high profile inheritance and bought ever privacy software under the sun as a tiny squirt – would go on that show." Shisui was low, thoughtful and lacking its overabundance of energy. "I mean, The Bachelor is as not you as it is possibly to get. You are, as closeted as you are, as lowercase 'r' romantic as one can be."

He paused to stare shrewdly at Itachi. The placement of the streetlamp offered Itachi a clear look of his cousin's face. Concern for his well-being was obvious and touching, offsetting Itachi's natural annoyance at Shisui's nosiness. "Did you actually make a deal with her?"

"Offered." Itachi stuffed his hands in his pockets. He had thought she'd see the inherent benefits of the arrangement.

"And she said no."

Itachi glared at Shisui's amusement. "Hm."

"Even when you made the pitch?"

Itachi said nothing.

Shisui stared even harder at him. "Wait. You didn't make the pitch?"

No response.

"You, who works like a _machine_ to get everything you want, didn't try to convince her. If that – your company – was the main reason you went through all of this trouble, why haven't you closed the deal with her?"

Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Itachi tried to shut Shisui's voice out. He remembered the look in Sakura's eyes after she'd rejected his initial proposal. Just before he'd been prepared to give a follow through – pursue her into a corner where yes was the only possible answer – he'd pulled back on that and reached forward. He could almost feel her pulse fluttering against his palm.

Why?

He dug around their experiences and their place in him, excavating the sham of a relationship he'd initiated under the mistaken assumption that no one would be hurt by it. They'd been on the same page from the beginning. Comparing the Sakura Haruno he'd met and the Haruno he'd come to know, though, Itachi could pinpoint the discrepancies between the two. Something had changed and, with a sinking feeling, Itachi suspected he knew what that something was. At some point, Sakura had moved on to the next chapter.

"I have to go home," he said abruptly.

Shisui raised an eyebrow, nonchalant as usual. "Sure, sure, gotta go and convince her that you have the best plan for you both, huh?"

Itachi nodded

"If your plan to keep this a business arrangement falls flat on the ground of personal feelings, don't forget… Don't forget reciprocity isn't necessary. You don't have to love her back just as she doesn't have to love you."

Itachi's mouth twitched. "It's not love."

"Still. Just keep that in mind, okay?"

"Sure."

Itachi had nearly jogged to the corner when Shisui called after him. "Hey, Itachi!"

He looked back.

"Just don't forget your mum – no glove, no love!"

Itachi gave a short laugh and shook his head. "You are a pervert."

When Itachi arrived at the house he and Sakura shared, he was uncomfortably aware why exercising in a suit was a huge no-no. The collared shirt stuck to his pecs and rubbed against his skin with the swinging of his arms, even though he was only mildly sweaty. His work trousers were tight against his ass in a way that made him thankful it was dark. He didn't want to be on the front of his father's crappier gossip mag.

Thank kami he'd left the suit jacket at the office.

"Is that you, Itachi?"

"Yeah." Itachi slipped off his leather shoes and placed them in the shoe closet by Sakura's flats.

"You're late tonight."

When he entered the living room, he was greeted with the sight of Sakura sitting on the chaise lounge, a Ming vase in her lap.

Itachi snorted. "Were you going to knock me out with that?"

Sakura gave him her deadest expression. "Yes, I survived five months to get here and now I am going to kill the golden goose." She paused. "That would be you."

Itachi collapsed onto the sofa perpendicular to hers. "Hm. Some welcome."

He watched her cradle the ornament, fingering the gold dragon painted on its side. "It'd probably be enough to make bail – I s'pose I'll just get a tire jack from the garage."

"Thank you for the advanced warning," Itachi said drily.

They sat in the quiet and Itachi remembered what he'd said to Shisui. The words seemed to hang around his throat like the proverbial albatross.

They were true. He did not love her and he could not marry someone he did not love; he was certain she held the same belief. Shisui might joke it went back to their Disney days, but it went deeper than that. No matter his numerous faults, Itachi's father had always loved Mikoto Uchiha. He'd grown up watching that flame weather both of their careers and their different opinions on childrearing. Itachi could and would expect nothing less, not from or for himself and Sakura.

He did not love her, she did not love him, and he couldn't turn those facts around.

Itachi saw Sakura yawn and hug the old vase to her. One day, he decided he would ask her about the vase – what attracted her to it.

One day. He folded his arms behind his head and wondered why he sought some sort of future with her. Watching her doze off on the couch, he knew he couldn't change her mind about his company. CEO was a fulltime gig and Sakura loved her work as much as he did his. She wouldn't give up being a doctor.

Business and marriage seemed out of the picture and Itachi dismissed being just friends out right.

At the very emphatic thought, he blinked at the plain ceiling in something like shock. He liked her, he realized – somewhere along the way, he'd become as infatuated with her as Sasuke and Naruto – well, he amended, _almost_ as.

Itachi groaned and rubbed his face. That didn't simplify matters.

He glanced over at her again. Strands of her (_very_ pink) hair covered her eyes. Itachi brushed them away with the back of his fingers. The tip of her nose slid against his wrist and his eyes softened.

He turned on his side, ignoring how his shirt stuck to the leather, and watched her sleep with her mouth slightly open.

No matter what people and the movies said, no one falls in love in a night of dancing, he thought, or even a day of really wild sex. No one falls in love on stage, not even after seeing the sparks of a supernova in eyes, eyes as green as grass after rain.

But he respected _her_ – not the pieces of her in the name of brains and breasts and breathtakingly strong will – but this woman named Sakura Haruno who loved and lived deeply. And at some undistinguishable point in time, he had grown to like her. His regard was hard to earn and appreciation even more so.

She was scarce.

Perhaps he didn't love her (yet) and she didn't love him (yet) and she couldn't change either of those things, but…

He sighed with resignation. He would ask her about her motives for being on the show later, but for now, "Let's start here."

* * *

**B-Side Tracks:** Thank you for reading! Not sure I am going to continue from here, but maybe?


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